Simon Heffer Explains How Culture Can Broaden The Mind

British journalist and author Simon Heffer will be writing a weekly column for The Telegraph waxing lyrical about the pleasures of culture and what they can do for your life. We couldn’t agree more with the sentiment. Here’s an excerpt:

Any part of our, or anybody else’s, culture has a story behind it: if you learn the story, you learn more about why we are who we are. But culture is never just utilitarian. It does more than provide information, or help pass the time, or in the case of architecture put a roof over one’s head. It should be something that gives pleasure, or has an even more elevated meaning. In less secular times, rich men and women patronised artists of all descriptions – painters, playwrights, sculptors, composers, poets, architects, even landscape gardeners – to create works that were dedicated to and amplified the glory of God.